Tag Archives: on-site sanitation

Sanitation experts at IRC have compiled the first version of a reference guide on low-cost sanitation for non-sewered service models, SanPack for short. Dr Christine Sijbesma and Joep Verhagen have collected materials that cover services for all stages of the sanitation life cycle, from preparation activities to the emptying, recycling and productive use of toilet contents. Per stage you can find a short intro text and links that lead you to relevant documents on a specific topic.

2.6 billion people are waiting for a toilet and the faecal sludge of an additional 1.5 billion people never gets treated. In the face of these indeed formidable challenges, the sanitation sector seems to have forgotten to celebrate the growing sense that we are getting a grip on how to tackle the problem of non-sewered sanitation. A new IRC paper [1] is an invitation to everyone to contribute by commenting on the framework and by sharing lessons learnt.

The framework presented for non-sewered sanitation is based on a few key principles:

Sanitation is a public good and hence, national and local governments have a key responsibility to ensure that sanitation services that last are provided to all.

The parameters for a sustainable sanitation service need to be built around access and use; operation and maintenance and safe faecal sludge management.

The framework identifies political and individual commitment as a key condition for sustainable sanitation services.

In addition, a sanitation service contains the following components: the enabling environment, the creation of demand, the supply chains, and well aligned financial arrangements and incentives.

With increasing sanitation coverage, the focus of a sanitation service needs to shift from increasing access to and use of latrines (getting onto the sanitation ladder) to O&M and the safe disposal or productive uses of faecal sludge.

The framework serves as a starting point for the development of a functioning sanitation service. However, the main argument of the framework is not towards a certain approach for demand creation or sanitation marketing but towards including and interlinking all four components and to consciously create political support for sanitation – creating a sustainable service that lasts.

We welcome your feedback and comments to further improve the framework and we are especially keen on learning from you how different components of sanitation framework can and are being operationalized and interlinked.

Most of all we want this framework to support the improvement of our collective impact so that the long wait for 1.6 billion can end.

This study evaluates how effective a worm based sanitation system is in reducing the rate at which solid waste accumulates and at how worms can improve the quality of effluent by reducing pathogen levels and the concentrations of harmful chemicals. Both pilot scale laboratory reactors and a prototype Tiger Toilet were fed with human faeces on a daily basis and the accumulated solid wastes in the systems were weighed. Every week microbiological and chemical analysis was carried out on the effluents of the systems, as well as of a control reactor without worms, which provided a point of comparison.

Over the course of the investigation, the worms processed the waste and reduced the total accumulated solids by 90% in the laboratory reactor and by 70% in the prototype reactor. Pathogen levels were reduced by an average of 99.79% and 95.45% in the laboratory reactor and the prototype reactor respectively, over this period. There was a reduction in the levels of harmful chemicals, such as COD, which reduced by around 94% in both reactors. This investigation verified that the Tiger Toilet technology provides an effective, low cost, low tech solution to less economically developed countries’ sanitation problems.

Hi Nicola, I am a colleague of Moritz and one of my research fields is quantifying and characterising faecal slugde on a city-wide scale. The hyperlink to the FAQ project, Moritz refers to in his post leads you to a website with publications about the approach we have implemented in Kampala/Uganda and Hanoi/Vietnam. I could see the application of the latrine […]

Hi Elisabeth, No - I wasn't thinking about it for travelers (if you mean international travelers - although I suppose they might use it too), but anyone who is visiting a town and needs to find a loo. And as well as finding the facility in the first place, I was thinking more as a means to monitor the quality of service provided by the operators of publ […]

NEWSLETTER OF MARCH 2015 LINK TO NEWSLETTER With 28 May just three months away, we're unveiling the new slogan for 2015, giving you a sneak-peek at the MH Day POP-UP Exhibition Toolkit and sharing the latest MHM updates!

Dear Elisabeth, Thank you for the message on our board. We are more than happy to address all your queries and also welcome all future queries and suggestions from you. Regarding the overlap between Wikipedia’s and ours content, we try to compliment the work of Wikipedia rather than compete with them. Additionally most of our content are the direct results o […]

Hi, I find two issues shared here: i. On MHM: Attitudes towards Menstruation: while in some parts a celebration is done on onset of puberty and in other it is kept a secret. www.quora.com/Why-do-the-some-people-cel...berty-in-South-India community I have worked with different communities and experienced: 1. Raised MHM awareness through school/ Peer Educator […]

With the fact that nearly 35% of Delhi slum dwellers still practise open defecation, most of community and public toilets in the capital remains non-functional; the present scenario doesn’t seem to meet the goals of Delhi Master Plan for making the city Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2015. In this article, Ajay Sinha, Chief Operating Officer, Feedback Foundat […]

We have chosen the winners of our Picturing CLTS photo competition. Thank you to everyone who submitted photos. It was great to see such diverse depictions of CLTS in action and of many related aspects like handwashing, inclusive WASH and monitoring.